Skuli Mogensen, Founder and Chief Executive of Wow Air, is sponsoring artist Ingvar Bjorn who is attempting to set a world record by creating The Largest Artwork in the World on social media with the most participants, all in support of UNICEF. 
The Guinness World Records’ existing record, ‘The most artists working on a single art installation’, was achieved by 201,948 artists who contributed to Face Britain, displayed on 19th – 21st April 2012. Ingvar has created an application for social media’s largest platform, Facebook, which performs like a brush to canvas. Everyone with an active Facebook user account can participate and leave their mark on the art history, by being part of The Largest Artwork in the World.
The attempt to create the work started when the President of Iceland, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, made the first artificial brush stroke on 7th February 2013. The artwork will last for 66 days – a day for each year that UNICEF has been operating. The outcome, The Largest Artwork in the World, will then be painted on a real large canvas and auctioned in support of UNICEF.
The artwork was sponsored by Skuli Mogensen, Chief Executive and founder of Wow Air, who helped the artist’s dream become a reality. “It has been a privilege to witness the birth of the largest artwork in the world and to see Ingvar’s passion and drive make his dream a reality,” he said. “We at Wow Air are proud to be a part of this great life art adventure.”
How to Participate
The user starts to log into Facebook, looks for largest artwork fan page (https://www.facebook.com/LargestArtwork), clicks on participate button, accepts short terms and then the user is part of the artwork.
When a user participates in the artwork, the user will be given an icon that is determined by the number of the user’s friends. Automatically by participating, a shaped brush stroke will appear on the canvas along with the user’s icon. The brush stroke will be in direction to the next user that will participate. For example, if user X is in New York and user Y who participated before was in London, the brush stroke from Y will head in the direction to X in NY. Every user and every brush stroke matters. It is not known how the artwork will look like at the end.
There are six specially made colours by Ingvar that will appear randomly in the brush strokes (green, yellow, purple, blue, red and white), and icons are black. The artwork has four shapes of brush strokes that are determined by the different time zones from where the users participate.
When user has participated, user’s brush stroke will always be a part of the artwork. Whenever the user feels like, the user can always locate and see the brush stroke he/she did in the artwork, and is able to share his/her brush stroke on Facebook for others to see.
Artist’s Ambition
The artist’s ambition is to do something to unite the world for the better. It has driven Ingvar to perform The Largest Artwork in the World. The ultimate objective of the project is to eliminate political and religious disputes and prove that art forms have no borders.
Through the artwork platform, Ingvar can unite people from all over the world, where everybody can join to create something larger than life and make history together. That is the beauty of artwork, to invite people all over the world to make their mark, and change the world in support of UNICEF.
